Celebrating Unique Mercedes-Benz: 1900-2014

The Fearsome AMG MAMPE Racing SLC

An unlikely rival to BMW and Jaguar's 1980 European Touring Car Championship contenders. AMG pressed on, however, and created a winner. And using an automatic transmission at that!

The AMG “Mampe” SLCAMG Creates another Unlikely Winner

In contrast to Daimler-Benz AG, which raced the Mercedes-Benz SLC in the World Rally Championship, AMG built a racing coupe for circuit competition. Hans Werner Aufrecht sought to triumph over Jaguar and Alpina-BMW in the European Touring Car Championship with the SLC.

The three-speed automatic transmission basically remained unchanged, the five-speed manual transmission that would have been the preferred option had not been homologated. Work on the AMG racing coupe was completed just before the first race of the 1978 season of the European Touring Car Championship in Monza, Italy. Notwithstanding this, the AMG drivers Hans Heyer and Clemens Schickentanz immediately secured a highly respectable fifth place on the grid, despite there still being plenty of room for improvement as far as both the brakes and the power transmission were concerned.

AMG did the best they could with the SLC's fundamentally hopeless aerodynamics. The competition wasn't much better.

During the four-hour race, the AMG team even managed to move up the field to third, a feat which it then repeated in the race on the Salzburgring in Austria. Finally, in 1980, the 450 SLC AMG came in second in the opening race of the season in Monza again. But it was in the car’s very last European Touring Car Championship race on the Nurburgring circuit that the driver team of Schickentanz/Denzel finally scored the victory that Hans Werner Aufrecht had yearned so long for.

Where are these bellowing SLCs today? Our research indicates three of these Group 4 SLCs were initially constructed and, after one was written off in a testing accident, two remain. One of the two – the car pictured at the top of the page – is resting at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart. The other car sits in private hands.

We found two 2007 “SOLD” listings on Race-Cars.com offering the other remaining car, chassis #WDB10702612002394, for $195,000 and 74,500 Euros (about $106,000) respectively. Which was correct?

Weighing only 2,200 lbs and developing 380hp, this rare SLC would be a lively tour and event car. Where is it now? Posts from its then owner Juergen Brodesser dated August 3, 2007 noted he was withdrawing the car from the market to race it in Nurburgring’s Oldtimer event with original driver Clemens Schickentanz.

It seems it took a further two years to sell the car and Brodesser noted in September 2009 that he sold the car to…original driver Schickentanz!

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5 Responses to “The Fearsome AMG MAMPE Racing SLC”

If these AMG Mampe SLC cars were based on the 450 SLC product line, then the car offered for sale should have a VIN# starting with 107024 – not 107026. 026 is the designation for the 5.0/500 SLC.

In addition, the unit number of 2394 would roughly coincide with a 1981 500 SLC model year car. What year were the AMG Mampe cars constructed ???

The VIN number indicates that this car would have the 4spd auto transmission. Would AMG have utilized the brand new 4spd auto transmission in a racing environment – the factory used them, albeit briefly, during their rally efforts – but would AMG have used them ???

Finally, the Russian VIN decoder site shows that this car was prepared for sale in France (Monaco). If that is correct, would AMG be sourcing their cars from France ???

To my knowledge, the “Brodesser”-car has never been offered as a “real” AMG Mampe SLC. I donÂ´t remember actual wording of the advertisements, but personally I was informed, by the broker Mr. Brodesser and the actual owner/financier of the car (who happen to live in the same town as I, that the engine wasnÂ´t original, a second Mercedes race engine would be delivered with the car and it wasnÂ´t claimed for this car to be one of the actual Mampe cars. At the time I was seriously interested in the car, as the price in relation to its eligibility (Tour de France, Le Mans classic), as well as extremely low maintenance cost. Not sure if the car was actually sold.